Life at an underground game company.
Posts tagged Art
Back to our regularly scheduled development!
01 year ago
We have not been slacking. We have been busy with a variety of things. Honest! So, now that we have accomplished a few things, it’s time to make some announcements!
First up on the list, whether you have noticed it or not: we have actually put some content in place, and put up a real home page over at: http://www.emeraldkingdom.com/ . More than anything, we wanted to take some time to make everything uniform across the board with our sites. Emerald Kingdom’s area is now, for the most part, done. While we are on the subject: dont forget to register for our forums.
Another thing we recently accomplished is retooling a bit of the Double Cluepon home page. Feel free to check it out.
Back to the topic at hand, one of the other things we have been doing is laying groundwork for Twin Perennial. Twin Perennial is a serial webcomic. It’s purpose: to help you folks start to get into the world of Emerald Kingdom. It’s been designed from a “ground up” standpoint. From the work done so far, it’s looking very much like it will appeal to a wide variety. One of the things I have said before is, Emerald Kingdom has someone for everyone. In terms of the story based characters, that is especially true. Our wonderful Sprites run the gamut. We hope to have Twin Perennial starting up soon.
Next up on our cavalcade of news: we have acquired some new talent! We have added our new Director of Animation, whom you will know as Sandalphon. She comes to us with a background of already really awesome work. She is bringing herself up to speed, and will soon be hard at work breathing life into Emerald Kingdom. She will also make you cry if you aren’t careful. In all seriousness, she is a highly skilled animator, and we look forward to seeing the new moving models!
Finally, we have released some new art for the hungry masses:
Sheyala is one hell of a bitter pill. =) You can find out more about how she was conceptualized here.
Fifty.
02 years ago
I have been quite busy as of late. Between resume vetting, working on some web re-organization and generally taking some time to regroup….I have barely had time to do much anything else. When I get busy, the blog goes silent. That’s going to change a bit as time goes on. More of the crew here at Double Cluepon will begin writing posts here and there. Nova, our CR Vixen will also be getting in here soon to keep things rolling, and keep things tidy.
So, for the fiftieth post, I just wanted to give you some updates as to what is going down here at Double Cluepon.
While we will be mostly interviewing this week, having collected a massive number of resume’s last week…it’s still not too late to submit a resume and portfolio to us. We have gotten so many folks sending us credentials it’s very overwhelming. We wish we could bring all of them in, but we just do not have the resources. However, one of the things we are considering is some kind of intern program. We think it might be helpful to some of these folks to still hang around a game studio. Especially an indie studio.
- WireWorks, our first game, fared much better than we initially hoped.
It sounds weird, but all of us felt WireWorks had a chance to not do as well as it did. We never expected it to hit four stars. (The version of WireWorks that is going into Emerald Kingdom will be far more polished) Despite that, it did a lot better than we hoped. It came out of the gate, and for our first ever product, it beat the Average, hovering around 3 stars, or just under. Not bad for our first try! Especially in a world of hundreds of thousands of flash games. We learned a great deal from its reception. We also learned where we failed, and what needs improvement. We are already putting some of these things into new policies as we move forward with Emerald Kingdom. Even so, everyone we spoke to directly in some way loved WireWorks, and we are quite proud of our debut product.
- We are currently working on revamping our web presence.
Be on the lookout, we are in the process of putting together a new unified web presence, with a uniform interface so things are easier to navigate. We are doing this now, while we have some time during the spin down of WireWorks development, and during our star search for a new artist.
- We have opened our forums, and have also posted some details about some major features you will find in Emerald Kingdom.
You can find our forums here. More to the point…the forums are the place to mingle and hobnob with us folks at Double Cluepon. We read them all the time, and may from time to time answer direct questions. If you want to get more direct with us about Emerald Kingdom…the forums are the place to do so.
- Twin Perennial is now in production.
We do not have a release date for the debut. However what we can tell you is this: the story outline is done, the script production cycle is now been started, and it is in full production. What is Twin Perennial? It’s a web comic which is based on the characters and world of Emerald Kingdom. While many of the main characters will appear, it will “key” in on two very important major characters. The sisters Paranoia and Confusia. Twin Perennial will serve to introduce the world, concepts and characters of Emerald Kingdom. We have not mentioned her in awhile, mainly cause she has been busy with her own gigs in addition to helping to develop the strip…but you should definitely check out Joan Varitek. You should also check out her etsy store. We love Joan. Greatly. In that platonic kind of kindred type of love. Not the prison type of love. Also, banana’s.
So, in closing…things are busy, yes. Not as busy as they are going to get very soon. I really want to see some of the kids walking around the world already.
Ja Mata!
StoryTeller begins to take shape, and other things!
12 years ago
One of the first things I learned about the production of video games was that, while the game itself is important, one of the more important parts of creating game content are the tools used behind the scenes.
The first ever thing built in StoryTeller. Ugly but beautiful. Note the Junkworks Building!
Early on, we recognized that content creation was going to be 50% of Emerald Kingdom. Possibly more, so while we were writing specs for Emerald Kingdom, it emerged that we were going to need some rather robust tools to create the world for the game. It was out of this discovery, that StoryTeller was born. StoryTeller has been in active code development now for what amounts to no more than a week, in terms of work done. That being said, we had to get some specifications down on paper (or in our case, a wiki) and then our new software engineer, Zach took to it. After a flurry of work yesterday, we have object placement working so far. It’s terribly rough, and it’s highly crude. The interface can be uglier than a blind date.
So with that said, in the span of about 40 hours, StoryTeller has:
- Zoom In/Zoom Out.
- Drag
- Grid selection
- Tile selection
- Tile Paint/Delete
- Object placement
- Asset drawers (where we keep things we want to use for building)
- XML File loading.
- Adding assets (tiles, objects)
- All kinds of other stuff, some working, some not.
All in all, not a bad job for the small amount of time it’s been actively worked on. The overriding specification for StoryTeller is this: creative people should not have to talk to a code developer to implement their art or vision. That goes for the people who draw (the artists) to the people who write (the writers, and quest developers) right down to the producer (the person who oversees, and maintains the vision of the finished product). A good tool should enable, not obfuscate. Simply put, when StoryTeller reaches a stable point, where it becomes useful on a full time basis, Emerald Kingdom’s world will begin construction. With the way we have done the specs for StoryTeller, building Emerald Kingdom will not take long. Why you ask?
Because while Zach is working on StoryTeller, and Doug is working on the back end of things…
Amy and the Art Department are creating model sheets.
Thynity, drilled down from a concept, into a model sheet.
From those model sheets, she has been putting together the assembly line for animating everything from Gremmies to Sprites. Clothing, Items…even Buildings, as you can see from the above picture. We are also adding another artist in the next week or so, to aid and speed up this process. (Wheee, Double Cluepon will be 6 people!)
While that is going on, story material is still being produced and edited. The Web Comic is being moved forward.
In short order: by the time StoryTeller gets to a usable point, which is not too far in the future…we will be ready, and we will have the supplies we need to paint the world. I have found that working in game development is not unlike cooking: there is an art to preparing all of your ingredients so things are all done in the proper order, so you can then assemble the dish.
WireWorks .85 Alpha. Note the updated menu.
Let’s also not forget WireWorks! WireWorks is approaching Beta. Sound has been plugged in, as well as numerous other planned features. One of the newer features added is a selector which will allow you to go up and down in the level ladder by 5 level increments. All of the menu functions have been enabled, and as I said previously, the sound is there. Sound is currently being tweaked. In addition to that, we will be updating the menu screen once more, to add a mute button for music. While we happen to think the music is great, and not in any way overbearing, some folks just don’t care for background music. We strongly believe in options, so one more menu board revision!
One of the more interesting features to have been added to the main playfield thus far is the “fuse” or timer/ticker. You can see it in the next shot.
The "fuse" timer bars, which tick down the time till the gel starts a flowin!
We had always planned for a good and intuitive timer in the upper left hand box. It’s finally been implemented, and works quite well. Note the three node board. Things start to get tricky with three nodes. At that, the version of WireWorks which will be in Emerald Kingdom will have high level 4 Node Boards! (Red, Green, Blue and Yellow) Nonetheless, the game play and timers are still being tweaked a bit more. Once WireWorks hits beta, we will be opening up the testing pool a bit more. We will be starting with people who have signed up for our mailing list. Random folks will be getting Beta invites for testing WireWorks. We’re betting the beta testers will have a great time playing.
Wheee, Elphie teaches you the ropes.
Speaking of playing, the other thing which has been implemented, is the “How to Play” tutorial. Elphie in all her glory. While the actual dialog is something that is not set in concrete yet, the routine for it is. We will be tightening up the how to play, with all the needed details and proper grammar over the next few days.
We can’t have Elphie acting illiterate! We know for a fact that hooked on phonics worked for her.
That’s about it. In wrapping up, we have not dieded. We’re all just busy busy busy. Making stuffs. For you. =)
Ja Mata!
C2E2 REPRESENT!
02 years ago
Joan Varitek will be at C2E2, which starts today and goes on through the weekend. While there, she will be promoting Double Cluepon, and specifically Emerald Kingdom. She has an entire run of custom made character cards from Emerald Kingdom. We did a set of 6. They are quite nice, we are proud of them. They also include one character we have not yet released to the public.
The back contains the Sprite name, a byline and some information about Emerald Kingdom.
Joan will be in the Artists Alley, at table G8. While there, you should make it a point to look at, and buy buy buy some of her most awesome artwork.
Today’s Updates! As Promised!
02 years ago
by Azrael
in Double Cluepon
Here we go with your promised update report!
Updates on Emerald Kingdom:
We have brought on a new developer. His job will be to work on the Emerald Kingdom client, as well as what we call the StoryTeller tool. To that end, he has been looking through engine code and bringing himself up to speed. We expect a more full report from him at the end of this week sometime. Needless to say, things are picking up. Emerald Kingdom’s artwork has progressed out of concepts into full time modelling. We have begun to build up an asset bank for things as they will appear in the game. Woo Woo!
Updates on WireWorks:
WireWorks entered it’s second Alpha about two weeks ago.We have obliterated most of the more flagrant bugs out there, and we opened the testing pool a bit more. That being said, we are now moving to getting it feature complete so we can move into Beta Testing. When that happens, we will open up the testing to a full invitation only beta, followed by release. So far though, the game is very tight, and very fun to play.
Updates related to the forthcoming webcomic:
As you may, or may not know, we have a webcomic in the works. The initial scripting for the first run of panels has been completed and had it’s revision. We have begun building up an infrastructure for it’s online publishing. Yay for our side! That said, we think it’s heading in the right direction, and should start off with a bang. I personally cannot wait to see the first episode hit! We also finalized some material for what will be a graphic novel at some point down the line.
Oh yeah. We released a contest on Deviant Art today. Check it out!
